Chicago Life

Archive for May, 2009

This time I have to include two corners, though both share something in common.

As a pedestrian, for years I wondered why the intersection of Jaeger and Hanford had such a wide, sweeping arc at only one side of the street. A half-block south and east, another corner has the same sweeping arc.

Several years later I learned that the sweeping arc of this corner, as well as the subsequent corner on Hanford and 4th, was designed so that the street car line could make the turn from and onto typically narrow streets.

While I know almost nothing about the former street car line that ran through the neighborhood, I did find this page which discusses the different gauges of track used, as well as some great old pictures of Columbus streetcars. According to the information provided here, the line was known as the Steelton Line.

It was this streetcar line that fed residents into the newly developed land known as Merion Village and helped connect the neighborhood to other parts of the city for years to come. Currently, COTA buses (#8 an #16) run along portions of this line making Merion Village one of the city’s best public-transit served neighborhoods.

Hal & Al’s, located at 1297 Parsons Avenue and Team Think-Urban.com are hosting a pre-memorial Day Party to benefit the American Diabetes Association – Tour de Cure bike ride on June 6th for diabetes research and education. The Pre-Memorial Day party will begin at 4pm at Hal & Al’s, a full evening of beverage specials, food, fun and games is planned.

A professional bike mechanic will be available to tune up bikes so party participants are ready for a summer of riding. The bike tune-up service is free; however a donation to the Tour de Cure is suggested. All proceeds raised by Team Think-Urban.com will benefit the American Diabetes Association – Tour de Cure.

Tour de Cure is a series of fund-raising cycling events held in 40 states nationwide to benefit the American Diabetes Association.

Think-Urban.com is a Columbus-based company dedicated to showcasing the new urban lifestyle in Ohio’s major cities; Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Dayton. See more information at www.think-urban.com

On April 19th Carrie Prejean, the California contestant in the Miss USA pageant, found herself in an awkward situation when she was asked about same-sex marriage by celebrity gossip columnist Perez Hilton. Like a deer in the headlights, the ill-prepared Carrie Prejean stumbled with incoherent statements that mirrored the conservative views of her family, her ministers and supposedly Jesus Christ himself. Many believe her answer led to her loss of the tiara.

Suddenly, however, Carrie Prejean has become the new-found spokesmodel for divisiveness, prejudice,hatred and intolerance. I doubt however, that she’d ever considered a career in this as a student at the San Diego Christian College but she appears to have taken the reins and is leading the team down the streets of todays segregated media outlets.

Less than a month after stepping into her own words while wearing pretty high-heels, she has hired a Christian public relations firm and recently announced that she would star in a $1.5 million ad campaign funded by the National Organization for Marriage, a group which hopes to continue to deny same-sex couples the right to marry.

What I find remarkably sad about this entire debacle is that Carrie Prejean is making a social splash, profiting actually, from the business of discrimination. She is not the only person in California to vote in favor of Proposition 8 but the others are not earning paychecks because of it. Even more troubling is that there are “Christian” companies that claim to be acting in the name of Jesus while making profits from the business of intolerance.

History is repeating itself because a little more than thirty-years ago Anita Bryant stepped onto the stage espousing similar remarks filled with hatred and intolerance. Anita herself was pageant queen. She rose to fame as a singer and later as the spokes person for the Florida Citrus Commission. It was when Anita Bryant chose to make the move into the politics of hatred that her career imploded.

Sadly Carrie Prejean doesn’t even have a career yet but the fame-seeking runner up appears to be building one on the very precepts that brought down her Sister of the
Tiara. Anything that Carrie Prejean chooses to do with her life will now be mired in this controversy.

She may sign a $1.5 million ad campaign today, but how likely is it that audiences will flock to see her on the silver screen five years from now? The paid-for breast augmentation by the Miss California USA organization may not be enough to salvage the career aspirations of Carrie Prejean – who is studying to be a teacher in Special Education.

Recently Carrie Prejean said she was praying for Perez Hilton. And in 1977, the Anita Bryant camp said the same thing to the protesters, who at a news conference in Des Moines, gave her a pie in the face. A pie in the face is a rare act, even today, but the proverbial pie in the face for Carrie Prejean has already been launched.

Fortunately today’s new media is available when I have the time to tune in. Between earning a living, keeping up the house and yard and commuting between Columbus and Chicago, I simply don’t have the time to schedule around my favorite programming.

Frankly, I have no idea when anything is actually broadcast, so podcasts, streaming media and web-casts keep me in the loop now more so than ever before. If a program is on when I happen to tune in, I’ll stay tuned for as long as I can.

In April the MySource spots I did for WOSU aired on both TV and radio, though I didn’t see or hear them myself. I did however hear from friends in Columbus who had. So for those of you, like me, who may not have had the chance to see the spot, its possible to see it on WOSU’s YouTube channel.

For over a year I’ve been volunteering with various WOSU projects and I was flattered when the folks there approached me for the MySource spots.